The Control Room V1 in Cubase

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The Control Room V1 in Cubase

hello everybody Andrew Blake from the digitalaudiomanual.com today we begin taking a look at the control room in Cubase but before we start I want to remind you that there's a link below to the free content navigation guide which is an easy to navigate webpage with links to all the content on this channel and besides that in the near future I'm going to begin adding tips and other bits of information that will only be available there you know things like simple steps that will get you started and up and running quick things that are in the videos but are written down in simple steps that serve as quick reminders when you need information down the road if you're working with programs like wavelab or Cubase plugins or the cable guys shaper Box 2 and many many other projects that are in the works then I know you're going to find just like I have that this is an invaluable study Aid and the other thing I want to make sure you understand is that this is not a simple PDF this is a constantly updated page that has any information that is new or anytime videos are changed really anything updated and once you have it you will always have the latest information constantly updated so if you haven't gotten it already go to the link below click on it and save it to your favorites it's my gift to you and it's absolutely free Okay so let's get started so the control room what is it the best way I can describe it is it's like the next level up from what you get when you start with Cubase as its basic program in its basic sense it runs everything through the stereo bus and out to your speakers and done deal on the other hand when you enact the control room you then get access to Q sends and monitor different monitor setups and just a whole uh you know bunch of extra features that you can't get without it now I had to stop and think for a minute when I started doing this because I had to run the time machine back to when I first got into Cubase myself and I remember hearing or reading the concept of the control room and it made absolutely no sense whatsoever to me at all so remembering that I want to you know kind of relay that to you and help you come to terms with it so you're not feeling put off by this control room thing if you've never seen it but let me show you in the beginning when you first get Cubase as I recall again it's been a long time now the control room is not enacted so let me kind of rewind my Cubase back to that place so we can look at what happens if you look over I'm in the project window right here and if you go over to the side rack here in the in the right Zone and turn this on you have some tabs up here VST media and one says CR standing for control room and as you can see I have this colorful set of knobs and controls and I have a control room on my project but if you are just getting Cubase yours may look something like this let me show you this if I go up to my menu that says Studio up here and I come down to where it says Audio Connections I click on that if you've never seen this you get this screen with all kinds of tabs for effects and external instruments and a couple of these outputs one of them says control room at the far end so you should check that out if you haven't seen it but also in the beginning here it says inputs and outputs so let me show you something here if we go to the control room and I have buttons here that say expand and collapse also I can expand all the different things I have set up in the control room but if we look right up on the top left here there's a button that says enable and disable the control room and if I hit this it's going to turn my control room off so I'm going to go ahead and do that so I get this Stern warning here that's saying are you sure you want to disable this now if I disable this I'm going to lose my microphone but I'm going to do it because I want you to see something so it's going to be quiet for a minute I'm going to disable this I can re-enable it and bring it back if you will notice over on the right when I disabled it this becomes just a blank screen there's nothing here anymore all these different tabs disappear all these different knobs disappear everything goes away the control room then becomes just a blank page when the control room is disabled I'm going to go back to the studio tab for a minute and go back to my audio connections if we look at the inputs and the outputs when you have no control room set up you'll be using these outputs and these will be assigned to your sound card and you'll basically just have a simple setup where you know you have your sound card output and you'll be working in Cubase and out it goes when you enable this control room you have exactly the same thing but you have the option to add a lot more to it basically so if I expand this and bring these all up so the main difference when you're just getting started if you look down here I have one that says monitor we're going to be talking about setting up all these different channels coming up here but once you've enacted like I have here this monitor at that point that becomes the place where I set the outputs to my sound card so in the most basic and simple sense you could turn on the control room have only the monitor not all this extra stuff I have here have those going to your sound card outputs at that point the outputs back on the output tab will say not connected because this is no longer being used it's going right to the control room think of them like an either or situation it's got to either be going to the outputs or it's got to be going to the control room can't be going through the outputs and the control room at the same time if you start that way that's kind of the way I thought about it in the beginning when I finally was able to figure this out pick one or the other either going from the outputs or going from the control room and of course since we're discussing the control room I would highly recommend you to go to the control room on the other hand again if you're brand brand new to this you might want to watch a few of these videos to get you know familiar with this before you start changing everything but the best I can tell you is I want to assure you there's not a whole lot to be afraid of that you know it's you're not going to lose anything by switching to the control room in fact you are only going to gain by doing it and once you've switched to the control room this is going to be your output from here on out you won't be really using the output section anymore so with that little basic stuff out of the way let's get into actually setting it up and uh learning what it's all about out so let's look at some of the basic ways to open this control room up we'll go up to Studio on the menu here and then you can come down it says control room that actually opens up its own Standalone window of the control room the other way we've already seen over on the right zone of the project if you hit the tab that says control room you'll see it and if you're looking at the full Cubase mixer same thing if you open up that right Zone you'll see the control room there as you're looking at the control room you have two tabs one says main down here at the bottom and the other one says inserts the basic idea here is that on the main is usually most of the controls that you'll use commonly whereas the insert tab maybe more things per project so we've also said in order to really use the control room you have to set up these channels in this audio connections go to Studio audio connections and then go to that tab that says control room when you right click in this screen you will see you what kind of you know outputs and channels are available here typically like here it says add an external and mine says there's six available left when I go to a add a queue it says there's one available left if I go to add a monitor for me it says there's three available left so depending on which ones you've used it'll tell you how many are left to be able to be used once you've added some kind of channel to this the next thing you're going to want to do is go over to this column that says audio device if you want a connection here you'll click on it and pick your sound card let me mention that some of these I have a lot of these that say not connected because it's not always necessary to actually connect these channels or these buses to my sound card many times these buses can serve a function even if they're not actually connected to anything and you'll see that as we go here and then finally you're going to go over to where it says device port and depending on what you picked on the audio device one you'll have some options here to choose what you want it to go to so just as an example the way I have mine set up I've right clicked in this area and I've chosen this option that says monitor as the first thing that I have set up on the monitor there's like a you know expand and collapse so you can see the channels actually there but anyway after I've added the monitor the next thing I did is I clicked on the audio device area chose my sound card clicked on that to put it in there and then when I went to the device Port I chose my main outputs which in this case was mix one left and mix one right at that point I'm able to actually hear something and I'm good to go as far as my basic connections when you're first setting this up the advised way is whatever you pick for your first monitor also use your main monitor outputs whatever you're going to use to listen or monitor your sound with again you can make more of these if you have other outfits you want to use or set up but always start with whatever your main system monitoring is there are some preferences to also be aware of if we go up to edit down to our preferences look down our long list of options and if we get to the bottom down here it says VST and there's a sub menu to that that says control room if we click on that and you'll see there's some various preferences here but the important one to look at to start with there's one that says exclusive device ports for monitor channels unless you have some kind of setup that's using multiple speakers like surround sound and maybe a stereo system on top of that you'll want to leave this option checked which keeps you from setting up a different monitor channels at the same time time when you didn't mean to all right that's going to wrap it up for today as usual if you haven't grabbed your navigation guide be sure to grab that before you go has links to all the content on this channel ever growing and free to use your ticket to an organized learning experience so if you're new to the control room you know consider maybe activating it and checking out what kind of options you have for setting up a monitor system for yourself and begin having a look at it and for those of you that are familiar with the control room well you know as usual details are forthcoming more powerful features in Cubase they go on and on and on as always great to have you guys here I'll see you on the next video